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Who’s a Citizen Journalist?

March 15, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

Okay, just for fun, let’s review.

I’m the nice one. I blog about business, writing, and thinking outside of the box.

According to Tom Glocer, Trevor Butterworth, and Roger Parry, today in the Financial Times, I’m also a citizen journalist. I didn’t know that. Should I put that on my resume?

If folks from the old Media such as Tom Glocer, Trevor Butterworth, and Roger Parry can talk about me and other bloggers. I see no reason that I can’t talk about the three of them and their little talk today.

There were 15 questions asked by 12 people. The floor for questions was open for a week–since Mr. Glocer’s speech to the Online Publisher’s Association in London ran as Old media must embrace the amateur on March 7. You’d think they might have found 15 questions by 15 different people that were worth answering . . .

The last question and the one that seemed most relevant to us was

The blogging revolution is in its infancy as the web was in the late 1990s. Bloggers will become more sophisticated and organised over time. The blogging community will itself split Ã¢â¬â between professional and amateur bloggers. Many professional bloggers will be experts in their own fields that do not have the desire/time to write for mainstream media. Add all these professional bloggers together (through technology or partnerships) and you potentially have the real challenge to old media in a few years. How can old media coerce or partner with a much more advanced and professional blogging community? Fighting hundreds of thousands of real niche experts will be a much different challenge. How can Reuters face this challenge?
Philip L Letts

If my search located the right Philip L. Letts, he appears to have an interesting business background. He also has several blogs.

Mr. Glocer’s answer showed a growing understanding, though he’s still breathing the air in the old media tower . . .

. . . I think media companies like ours need to experiment with both amateur and professional blogs. Reuters has been encouraging our own professional journalists to blog events, like the Consumer Electronics show Ã¢â¬â so you should not expect all the Ã¢â¬ÅexpertsÃ¢â¬? to come from the outside. To attract outside professionals you need to offer a platform, an audience and a brand that is appealing. The war will not be won by coercion but by mutual consent.

Mr. Butterworth, who makes no bones about his dislike of blogs, showed both his arrogance and his belief in the use of big vocabulary . . .

. . . there is a much more fundamental question: how many readers do you alienate as a news organisation by indulging in blogging? I think you (and mainstream media blog evangelists) overestimate, at the very least, American appetites for bloviation. Branded opinions yes; what DaveSpart68 in Ohio thinks about George W. Bush, no.

Presently, the reality of the blogathons at some newspapers in the U.S. seems to be less expert disquisition and more inquisitorial musing on American Idol or Lindsey Lohan. Fine, clearly there is a market for this kind of pop cultural chatter Ã¢â¬â but how much is it enhancing the newspaper as a business? Not as much as devoting more resources to producing original, insightful and well-written content, IÃ¢â¬â¢d warrant.

Second, the idea that there are hundreds of thousands of Ã¢â¬Åniche expertsÃ¢â¬? blogging away (or ready and willing to blog) lacks empirical evidence. IÃ¢â¬â¢m very impressed with scienceblogs.com Ã¢â¬â read the surgeon/scientist Ã¢â¬Årespectful insolenceÃ¢â¬? and you get a real sense of how the mainstream need to upgrade their medical reporting. . . .

Mr. Parry, won my favor by calling things as he sees them with the fewest words and seemingly the most experience of reality . . .

. . . The degree to which a blog is interesting to people other than its author will depend on the subject matter, the authority, the level of Ã¢â¬ÅnewÃ¢â¬? information and the style of the writing. In short the most popular blogs will share the same characteristics as the most popular newspapers, magazines and broadcast programmes.

In some ways the blog is the digital version of the letter to the editor or the self produced leaflet but with the added dimensions or interactivity, real-time distribution and global access. The blogger who produces something of very narrow subject interest can still draw a sizable audience as they have the whole world as potential readers.

Existing media will have to embrace blogs as an enhancement to their content offer in the same way they commission articles from experts, run reader polls and invite letters.

Bloggers who do their job well will, like star columnists, attract a loyal following and will be paid (if they want to be ) to let their blog be aggregated into an existing media offering. . . .

I do have one question that didn’t get answered. If Tom Glocer, Trevor Butterworth, and Roger Parry got fired tomorrow, would they then be citizen journalists like me?

I wonder . . .

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Financial Times Debate On–Should Old Media Embrace New?

March 15, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

If you’ve been following the conversation, Tom Glocer Don’t Spin Stories to My Friends, you might be interested in the debate going on this afternoon at the Financial Times. Click the screenshot to follow Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters; Trevor Butterworth, Financial Times contributor; and Roger Parry of Clear Channel as they field questions on the topic of how the MSM should respond to the new media.

The Q&A has already started.

I’m more than interested in your comments. Do come back and leave one.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Looking in the Right Direction — The MSM Isn’t. Are You?

March 7, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

Why the MSM Can’t See the Threat

The Main Stream Media and those who aspire to be part of it are concerned about what’s happening with blogs. They just can’t seem to get their minds around something that doesn’t abide by the rules that have been carefully laid out and followed for so many years. The old guys . . . and I did say guys didn’t I? . . . at the top are used to calling the shots, so used to it, they’ve lost track of basics of how market economies work. Certainly if they received their MBA in the last 25 years, they ran into the work of Michael Porter.

So let’s start with the competitve threat posed by blogs as defined by Michael Porter’s Five Forces that David Starling so eloquently stated

the power of suppliers
the power of buyers
barriers to entry
the degree of rivalry among incumbents
the presence of substitutes

Blogs, as David so eloqently stated, are all five. They have power over suppliers and buyers and in many cases are them. Blogs have no barriers to entry. Blogs are substitutes and rivals.

So why isn’t the MainStream Media shaking in their boots?

Possibly because they can’t bring themselves to believe what they’re seeing.

How could it be possible that a bunch of real people without their resources could be doing anything called publishing? If we don’t see it, it can’t be happening.

Sad to say, looking in the wrong direction is a popular response in the world of business.

What Should the MSM Be Worried About?

On to Scott Karp’s comments that I mentioned earlier . . . This is why Media/Web 2.0 needs Marketing 2.0 Ã¢â¬â we need a new economic paradigm for valuing attention, which will create a new paradigm for value creation in Media/Web 2.0.

Media+Web longing for a economic paradigm that includes Advertising/Audience is how I paraphrased it. Where do we find that? We find that three places.

A Listers
Blog Networks
Social Bookmarking and Social Search Engine Sites

All of these have one thing in common–Power. The power to move an audience around the the web with a small effort. We know the value of the Slashdot effect. The good news can bring down a network server. It works the same within the tight network of the A-Listers. Scoble says “breeeeeport” and all his fans link to it. Think of what a network of 80 or so blogs might have the power to do if they wanted to move an idea or an audience across the internet.

It won’t be long before advertisers understand this.
It will be slightly longer before the MSM understand that the advertisers do.

What Happens to Us in the Magic Middle

That’s why we in the Magic Middle need to take Social Bookmarking seriously. It has the power to make a significant difference in the future of our place in the Internet. We need to find the ways to use it in our favor, to use it to maintain our status as the “mom and pop” stores of the Internet.

Whether we need to buy into the advertising model or not we’ll have to find ways to compete with the power brokers on the level of audience, or else we’ll get lost. Socialbookmarking offers a venue that could be the best chance. At the very least becoming a part of something bigger than we are is probably a good thing to do. A new blog every second means that every second we get smaller.

To be an entrepreneur in a world of millions of them is going to require a new kind entrepreneur and a new kind of entrepreneurial thinking and networking.

When my son was four, he was fascinated by geography. He knew more about the planet than most adults do. As I tucked him into bed one night, he asked about a business trip I was taking the next day.

“Mom, There are mountains in Nevada. Right?”

“Yes.” I said.

“Don’t look this way and walk that way,” was his response.

I’ve never found out whether he thought I was going to walk into a mountain or off a cliff. I was just charmed that he was worried about me.
He’s a nice one too. 🙂

What are you doing to make sure you’re looking in the right direction?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Why MSM Are Afraid of Blogs–and Should Be

March 6, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

They say the blogosphere is about the conversation. Well, an interesting business conversation has been going on since Thursday. That’s when Mr. Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters gave the Keynote Address in London to the Online Publishers Association. According to the Guardian UK, Mr Glocer warned the “old media” that they needed to know their own worth and be prepared to change or they’d lose out of the online pie. Mr. Glocer’was quoted.

I believe the world will always need editing,” he said. “Just because everyone has the potential to publish their own blog, doesn’t mean they’re all worth reading. The role of companies like ours is to edit and filter, and provide open tools for the audience. The good stuff will float to the top.

Nothing patronizing there, Mr. Glocer. I’ve worked for a few publishers. Your experience seems to be different from mine. Where I worked, as a rule, the good stuff was many places besides the top.

The Reuter’s CEO, Mr. Glocer, went on.

Protectionism doesn’t work, but neither does total surrender. As media companies, we now have access to a rich world of sources. Let’s not turn away from the potential of all of this, but understand it and unlock it.

Gee, that makes me feel all grown-up and warm inside. I didn’t know the Old Media owned the keys to the world. Could I have a quarter to buy a candy bar?

Mr Glocer went on to say that the role of old media should be that of content facilitator, tools provider, editor, and go-between providing structure to the information between supplier and the consumer–even if they are the same people.

I guess that’s because we can’t figure out how to talk to each other.

In other words, Mr Glocer, you’re happy to let blogs have a space in the media world as long as everyone understands that old media will still run the show?

Richard MacManus on Next Generation Web and Media at first found this speech left him breathless, and then came back to earth because of Eran Globen’s post, which said that the old media has always been seeding clouds; we don’t want them interloping; and the editing will take care of itself in time.

Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine says Reuters gets it, and to Jarvis’ credit, he was there. But . . .

Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0 completely disagrees with Jeff Jarvis and everyone (and there were lots of everyones) saying that Tom Glocer has fooled them into thinking he is on their side. Mr. Karp points out, rightfully I think that Glocer’s points are a formula for more of the same–old media as it already exists. Perpetuating the entrenchment, that’s he calls it. Scott Karp is 100% right.

Scott Karp goes on to add that blogging has two out of three parts–Media+Web longing for a economic paradigm that includes Advertising/Audience. He’s upfront about not knowing how to build the rest of this economic model, but again he’s right. This is the key to where things need to go.

At the same time this conversation was going on, a man I like to think of as a friend was writing this.

Part of what makes the blogsophere such a perplexing challenge for mainstream media is this: it is not easily amenable to analysis using standard strategic management theories and analytical frameworks. Consider, for example, the problems that arise when one uses the most widely taught strategic management framework, Michael PorterÃ¢â¬â¢s Five Forces, to get a handle on the competitive threat posed by blogs. . . . that the determinants of profitability in an industry are explained by five “forces”- the power of suppliers; the power of buyers; barriers to entry; the degree of rivalry among incumbents; and the presence of substitutes.

When I say that blogs are perplexing, it is not just because they don’t fit neatly into any one of those five classes of determinants. The real problem, as I see it, is that they fit into all of them, at the same time. Blogs are new entrant, substitute, complement, and rival. They offset much of the power the MSM has traditionally had over its both buyers and its suppliers. Were blogs just any one of these things, they could be easily be squashed, co-opted, or marginalized. But they are not. Incumbent firms donÃ¢â¬â¢t see challenges and challengers like this everyday.
–David Starling, The Business of America is America

All of those people I read following the links on all of those blogs. Most of them weren’t doing more than passing on what had been said. . . . Two people brought something startling new to the conversation–Scott Karp and David Starling–they’re on opposite sides of the world and weren’t even responding to the same thing.

Boy, do I wish I could be in a room with the two of them.

How did the rest of them miss what Glocer was saying? Is this another elephant standing in the room?

–ME “Liz” Strauss